Vienna Expats is an online community and has been online since 2005 and exists to provide information for Expats living in and around Vienna. We hold frequent events, from monthly Meet and Greets, regular barbecues in Summer, and other events.

Our "members" (we use the term in inverted commas as there is no membership fee or formal membership as such) come from all kinds of backgrounds - from au pairs through to trailing spouses, students and academics, members of the international community working for international institutions through to people working for Austrian companies.

We've had members from all around the globe - from Alaska through to New Zealand, South America through to the Far East, Southern Africa through to Northern Europe. Some are here for the shorthaul - others make Vienna the certain of their permanent vital interests.

Our forums provide a wealth of information about relocation and living in Vienna and Austria - both for people already in Vienna and people who have yet to make the move to Vienna.

UK expats – Don’t miss out, you may be able to vote in the General Election says Electoral Commission

The UK Electoral Commission has launched a dedicated overseas voter registration campaign. The campaign aims to encourage British citizens living overseas to register to vote ahead of the UK Parliamentary General Election, due to take place on Thursday 7 May 2015.

To mark the start of the campaign, the elections watchdog is hosting Overseas Voter Registration Day on Thursday 5 February 2015 in a bid to boost the numbers of UK residents overseas on the UK’s electoral registers.

This is the first UK General Election where people can register to vote online. The Electoral Commission hopes that the new online process will encourage more UK nationals living overseas to register to take part in elections from overseas.

Estimates show that there may be as many as 5.5 million UK nationals living overseas, but there are fewer than 20,000 currently on the electoral registers.

To register as an overseas voter, UK residents overseas must have previously been registered in a UK constituency within the last fifteen years.

The new year has started with some site updates - even though Facebook seems to be most people's first port of call for asking questions nowadays, our forums continue to be used and are therefore maintained and kept up-to-date. The forum software has been updated to the latest version of phpbb. The new template looks slightly different to the one that users and moderators will be used to, but should hopefully be self-explanatory. Users will perhaps need to empty the cache on their browsers - otherwise normal service has been resumed at the start of 2015, our 10th anniversary year.

The following statutory public holidays shall apply for 2015 in Austria. Some Bundesländer also have additional holidays not included in the list below. The list also includes half days (24.12. and 31.12.) and the Protestant public holiday of Good Friday.

The information below has come through to us from the FCO - we would advise all expats (whether British citizens or not!) to make sure that you have adequate insurance cover prior to travelling. The below is provided to give you a good idea of what you should consider.

In order to combat "skimming" which is the copying of the magnetic strip on bankomat/debit cards, which is currently on the rise, Austrian banks are about to introduce a new function called GeoControl. The function will mean that it will only be possible to make cash withdrawals in many countries outside of Europe if the customer explicitly authorises that their card can be used for such purposes. GeoControl will come into effect from 15.12.2014 - and will help make it more difficult for the magnetic strips on debit cards to be cloned and subsequently used fraudulently outside of Europe for cash withdrawals.